STEALING THE NY PRIMARY FOR HILLARY – BERNIE, WATCH OUT!

“No one knows who Bernie Sanders is”, said U.S. Congressional representative Charles Rangel just 3 months ago, as Rangel once again endorsed Hillary Clinton. “I never consider Senator Bernie Sanders to be in the same professional standard for the president as I do Hillary Clinton, not by a long shot.”

– U.S. Congressional Representative Charles Rangel

Americans are notorious for having very short memories. So with Charlie Rangel on the stump again for Hillary Clinton, let’s go back 8 years to 2008 when Clinton was running in the Democratic Primary for President of the United States against Barack Obama.

At polling places in Charlie Rangel’s Harlem congressional district, EDs were reporting votes of 300 to ZERO, 240 to ZERO, for Clinton over Obama — IN HARLEM.

Corruption has always been rampant in U.S. elections, and the Clintons (both of them) are among the leaders of that pack. And it doesn’t take some geek manipulating codes from afar on computerized voting machines to steal an election. It was easy to tamper with the old mechanical machines as well, if a group dedicated themselves to doing that.

So we should understand that the Clinton machine will be going all out against Bernie Sanders, using any means necessary — legal or otherwise — to try to steal this election at the behest of their Wall Street masters, including the theft of votes at the polls. Younger people might not recognize that history, neither in New York overall nor in the case of the Clintons.

Nor do we remember Michael Connell, who was Karl Rove’s main “fixer”. Connell just happened to be killed when his small plane mysteriously crashed at the end of 2008 just as he was about to spill the beans on his role in stealing the 2004 presidential election. When his body was officially found, his blackberry cellphone was missing. See story HERE.

So let’s go back and read John Nicholls’s column in The Nation about that Hillary Clinton/Charlie Rangel travesty in 2008, followed by Gersh Kuntzman’s report for the Brooklyn Paper.

Harlem Mystery: Did Rangel’s District Go for Barack Obama? (Not according to the machines)

by John NicholsThe Nation
February 16, 2008

New York Congressman Charlie Rangel was an early and essential backer of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president.

The support of the senior House Democrat was required if the senator from New York was to be able to run nationally with the assurance that her home turf was “locked up.” And Rangel, as the dean of New York’s Democratic House delegation, and a dominant player in the politics of Harlem for four decades, helped to do just that.

Along with the support of Georgia Congressman John Lewis, Rangel’s backing also gave Clinton credibility in the African-American community beyond New York. But, now, Lewis is wavering in his support for Clinton — suggesting to the New York Times that, after his Atlanta-area congressional district voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, he is likely to cast his superdelegate vote at the Democratic National Convention for the surging senator from Illinois.

When word came that Lewis and other African-American House members were starting to talk about “keeping faith” with their constituents and voting for the candidate who could be the first African-American nominee for president, I immediately checked the results from Rangel’s congressional district.

According to figures reported after the February 5 New York primary, Rangel’s Harlem-based 15th district voted rather comfortably for Clinton. The unofficial count with 100 percent of the votes supposedly tabulated was:

Clinton — 55,359 votes, 53 percent

Obama — 47,514votes, 45 percent

That was close enough to create a 3-3 delegate split. But it was a clear Clinton win, and thus there would be no pressure on Rangel to vote the will of a congressional district that backed Obama.

Or so it seemed.

Now comes Saturday’s New York Times Metro Section report headlined: “Unofficial Tallies in City Understated Obama Vote.”

According to the paper:

“Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.”

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.

City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.:

The Times adds this relevant information: “The 94th Election District in Harlem, for instance, sits within the Congressional district represented by Charles B. Rangel, an original supporter of Mrs. Clinton.”

No one is suggesting that Rangel did anything wrong, nor should they. There are many explanations for why vote counts are off, and there are many players in the process — and Rangel is one of the more honorable of the lot.

What New Yorkers should be asking for, however, is a complete review of the results in New York City, with a heavy focus not just on the 80 election district where Obama supposedly received no votes but also on those where it appears that his vote was far below the level of support that he received in surrounding districts — and that might reasonably be expected.

Could there be another 8,000 votes for Obama in the 15th?

That’s a lot. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they exist.

No one, be they Clinton or Obama supporters, should question that every effort must be made to find every Obama vote in Harlem, along with “missing” Obama votes from other congressional districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

At issue may be a few more pledged delegates for Obama — no small matter in a close race for the nomination — and the broader question of how superdelegates who want to respect the sentiments of their constituents, a group that could include Rangel and several other House members from New York, cast their votes at this summer’s convention.

Zero-bama: Did Clinton really shut out Obama in some districts?

by Gersh KuntzmanThe Brooklyn Paper
February 23, 2008

Paul CurleyVoting machines are stored in a Red Hook warehouse.

Brooklyn election workers undercounted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of votes for Barack Obama in the New York primary earlier this month, spawning calls to investigate the Board of Elections and even conspiracy theories that workers were trying to help home state Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Clinton won Brooklyn by a slim 50–48 percent margin on Feb. 5 ­ and in a state where delegates are awarded based on the popular vote rather than in a winner-take-all system, any undercount could cost Obama in his delegate-by-delegate fight against Clinton.

A Brooklyn Paper investigation of the unofficial tallies revealed serious flaws in the counts at 70 election districts borough-wide:

• In 22 EDs, Obama was credited with zero votes. In all cases, the election districts were in neighborhoods where Obama performed well.

In one Coney Island district, Clinton got 93 votes to Obama’s 0. In nearby Bensonhurst, one district’s count was 18 votes for Clinton, 0 for Obama. Another district in that neighborhood had it 37–0 for Clinton.

Red Hook’s seventh ED? Clinton, 57–Obama, 0.

Bushwick’s 11th ED? Clinton, 79–Obama, 0.

The same neighborhood’s 58th district? Clinton, 118–Obama, 0.

In East New York’s 75th district, Clinton was credited with 99 votes to Obama’s zero.

Indeed, Clinton may have won some or even all of these districts, but it is very unlikely that the vote was unanimous.

• In 14 election districts, no votes were recorded at all, an extremely unlikely occurrence in these multi-block areas that are home to up to thousands of people ­ especially during a hotly contested presidential primary.

• In two election districts, Clinton was credited with hundreds of votes more than she likely received. In one Crown Heights ED, Clinton supposedly received 720 votes to Obama’s 85. And in another Crown Heights district, Clinton was credited with 680 votes to Obama’s 64.

In both cases, the count is extremely suspect considering that the total vote in each of Brooklyn’s 2,000 election districts rarely exceeded 200. Election expects believe that in both cases, someone added a zero to end of the Clinton tally to give her 720 and 680 when she most likely only got 72 and 68 votes in those EDs.

• In many districts, Clinton’s margin of victory appears to be unlikely.

Did Clinton really win election districts in Sheepshead Bay by votes of 72-5 and 41-3?

And did Clinton really beat Obama 111-8 in a Brighton Beach district, 180-3 in Bath Beach, 49-2 in another Bath Beach district, 78-8 in a Bensonhurst district, 67-4 in another Bath Beach district, and 81-8 in a Williamsburg district?

• New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who dropped out of the race a month before the New York Primary, was credited with hundreds of votes that he most likely did not receive.

East New York was the epicenter of this purported Richardson revolution:

In one district, for example, Richardson was credited with 36 votes, yet Obama received zero votes and Clinton received 74. In another district, Richardson got 64 votes to Clinton’s 88 and Obama’s 125. In still another district, Richardson got 33 votes. In another, he got 79.

In one Greenpoint district, Richardson was even credited with the unlikely win, with 200 votes to Clinton’s 46 and Obama’s 76.

And in Fort Greene, where Obama did extremely well, election workers in one district rendered the count as 12 votes for Clinton, 40 votes for Richardson and none for Obama.

• In one Gravesend district, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who also abandoned his campaign before the New York Primary, received 19 votes to Obama’s zero. He also was credited with 174 votes in an East New York district where Clinton was credited with 222 votes and Obama got 141.

And in one Park Slope-Prospect Heights district, Clinton was credited with 133 votes to Obama’s 2. Kucinich was credited with 162 votes. The Ohio congressman is certainly popular in Park Slope, but he’s not that popular.

• In two districts, all six candidates were credited with receiving dozens of votes.

In East New York, for example, one district had these results: Clinton, 111; Richardson, 92, Joe Biden, 88; John Edwards, 83; Barack Obama, 79; and Dennis Kucinich, 67.

Not only is the total vote in that ED ­ 520 votes ­ significantly higher than the average hundred or so votes cast, there is virtually no chance that voters in that district cast the vast majority of votes for the four candidates who were no longer in the race

Taken together, the 70 districts with significant election-day anomalies could amount to a vote swing of more than 1,000 votes. Depending on where those votes are, it could mean one or two more delegates for Obama in a race to the nomination where every delegate will count.

Board of Elections officials did not respond to questions from The Brooklyn Paper, but the agency has cautioned other media outlets to avoid drawing conclusions from the “unofficial” numbers that are compiled by poll workers on Election Night.

The agency has almost completed its started recanvassing of the decades old, level-controlled voting booths, thousands of which are stored in Red Hook. Elections officials said they expected to have an official tally by Tuesday.

But already, the Obama numbers are moving up. In the Bushwick district where Clinton was supposedly ahead 118-0, she now leads 118–116.

Such “human error” happens “all the time” on Election Night said Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez. But the errors are usually fixed, she said, before final results are certified.

How do such errors happen? A Brooklyn man who worked as a poll watcher for the Obama campaign told The Brooklyn Paper this week how he “saved” 100 votes for Obama during an Election Night count in a Queens polling place.

“The vote totals [inside the machine] resemble old odometer readings,” said Paul Curley, who worked the primary as a volunteer for “Young Lawyers for Obama.”

“At each machine, one poll worker called out the numbers and another wrote those numbers down on a form that gets sent to the Board of Elections. … At one of the machines, a poll worker called out that Obama had received 30 votes. But I noticed that the number [in the machine] was actually 130, and I immediately pointed this out.

“The first poll worker peered up at the odometer more closely. Seeing that I was correct, he instructed the other worker to correct the number on the form. It was actually 130, not 30. … His 100 votes had almost vanished into the night.”

Curley did not attribute the error to maliciousness by election workers, but exhaustion after a long day and difficulty reading tiny numbers in an old machine.

But others seized on the Election Night anomalies to call for an investigation into the Board of Elections.

“The irregularities in the unofficial presidential primary election results warrant further examination,” Councilman Simcha Felder (D–Borough Park) told The New York Sun. “The New York State election process is especially susceptible to human error, and unfortunately these occurrences are frequent.”

It didn’t help matters that the miscount favored a local senator (Clinton, originally from Illinois) in her fight against an outsider from Illinois (Obama, who actually lived in Brooklyn for a year).

Many of the miscounts, for example, occurred in election districts that are represented by Brooklyn Democratic Party chairman Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D–Bushwick) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D–Manhattan), two staunch Clinton supporters.

Lopez told the Times that his “old-fashioned” get-out-the-vote drive, not any Election Night shenanigans.

But critics want to be absolutely certain. Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, has also called for an investigation.

“The fact that this presidential race is so close and this is Hillary’s home state raises questions that need to be asked,” he said.

9 Responses

Greetings Mitch
Interesting article proving that votes are somehow stolen and probably others created.
We should just use elections as a tool to make public certain issues.
You know, in Peru there is Governor, a Marxist, who won reelection in the province of Cajamarca with 67% of the vote.
He is Gregorio Santos, a fierce opponent of the multinational mining companies and has fought, even as governor, alongside indigenous people against the military in various huge protests against the mining companies.
He is now jailed, although he remains Governor. Jailed by the Humala government accused of corruption.
This is the point: FROM JAIL HE IS NOW A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE AND LAST WEEKEND WAS ALLOWED TO LEAVE JAIL FOR ONE DAY TO PARTICIPATE WITH SEVEN OTHER CANDIDATES IN A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE.
SO EVEN PERU IS MUCH MORE DEMOCRTIC AND TOLERANT THAN THIS PATHETIC USA “DEMOCRACY”.
Again, thanks for the article.
Vila

Excellent work, Mitchel. Thank you for these enlightening articles from 2008 that can strengthen us to deal with the daunting challenges ahead, in the effort to have an election that is fair and democratic. That said, perhaps it was naive of you to think this would be not-too-controversial. I had the same kind of naivete very recently when posting challenges to Hillary and her supporters, and was met with rabid rage and venom about people blaming Hillary for everything. However, perhaps retaining a certain level of naivete is essential to staving off the inner censor and fear that might keep us from expressing ourselves truthfully sometimes.

You make a major criminal accusation against a sitting U.S. Congressman, offering no evidence whatsoever. Even the Nation article – your only citation here – says the following:

No one is suggesting that Rangel did anything wrong, nor should they. There are many explanations for why vote counts are off, and there are many players in the process ­ and Rangel is one of the more honorable of the lot.

Your headline, and your story, are irresponsible, and are made with reckless disregard for the truth of your accusation.

What’s more, you cite a 3 month old quote from Rangel, supporting Hillary, before Sanders’ primary victories showed he has staying power. Of course Rangel is tied to Clinton – she a former NY Senator, he the most influential NY Democrat in Congress.

We on the left have enough problems with disinformation from official sources. All you are doing is adding to it here. Your lack of integrity and irresponsibility are appalling.

Well Greg, sorry we disagree. Even a moment’s google search by you would have turned up a major NY Times article and a number of others about this. The Nation had to add that disclaimer because of fear of being sued. Anyone who has been around electoral politics in NY City knows that elections are stolen, and how. The office-holders control (and are controlled by, to some extent) the district leaders, who can “look the other way” as numbers are not recorded or even flipped. Pollworkers owing allegiance (and their paid jobs) to those office holders and district leaders “misread” the numbers in the preferred candidate’s favor, and if no one challenges it it shockingly is “certified” by the BOE.

I’ve gone through the warehouses of voting machines numerous times and found too many “mistakes” to note — some are honest ones, but others probably were intentional.

There are several excellent films out about how votes are stolen on the NEW machines.

I should have also added — I will, shortly — how Karl Rove’s main “fixer” — Michael Connell — just happened to be killed when his small plane mysteriously crashed at the end of 2008 just as he was about to spill the beans on his boss. When his body was officially found, his blackberry cellphone was missing. Shades of Karen Silkwood!

We disagree. A huge chunk of the zero votes for Obama in Manhattan was throughout Rangel’s CD. He’s the boss of that disrict along with the district leaders. Can I prove it in court? Actually, with subpoena power, yes. Without it, No. But it’s evident.

You need to get your facts straight. I live in Harlem and what you are saying is simply not true—unless it refllects the new gentrification populationâ’s vote. And, of course, you know the racial makeup of people who voted in those primaries. Let me know the ethnic and racial makeup of those voters. Incidentally, the neighborhood of Columbia University and other bastions of privilege are classified as Harlem—Mr. Rangel represents Columbiia University. Surprise, surprise.

What facts don’t I have straight?
Votes were intentionally misreported to give the appearance that no voters (most of them Black) in Rangel’s district voted for Obama, and so flipped the delegates to Hillary Clinton. It was a ruse, a lie.

What do I have wrong there? Even the NY Times broke the initial story on that attempted theft of Obama’s votes by Clinton.

Anyone who has been around electoral politics in NY City knows that elections are stolen, and how. The office-holders control (and are controlled by, to some extent) the district leaders, who can “look the other way” as numbers are not recorded or even flipped. Pollworkers owing allegiance (and their paid jobs) to those office holders and district leaders “misread” the numbers in the preferred candidate’s favor, and if no one challenges it it shockingly is “certified” by the BOE.

I’ve gone through the warehouses of voting machines numerous times and found too many “mistakes” to note — some are honest ones, but others probably were intentional.

There are several excellent films out about how votes are stolen on the NEW machines.

I should have also added — I will, shortly — how Karl Rove’s main “fixer” — Michael Connell — just happened to be killed when his small plane mysteriously crashed at the end of 2008 just as he was about to spill the beans on his boss. When his body was officially found, his blackberry cellphone was missing. Shades of Karen Silkwood!